GKE Cluster Creation
Background
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) has become one of my favorite ways to easily spin up a Kubernetes cluster. I find Google Cloud overall to be very easy to use and get started with, and so I’ve taken to using GKE often. I use other providers too, but GKE is pretty my go to. Most often, I’m using a cluster to deploy Tanzu Application Platform on top of it.
Problem
I believe that clusters can and should be disposable. Thus, I find myself recreating clusters often. While the web UI is a great option, I’ve also find the need to tweak certain knobs from time to time. Since I use my clusters with Tanzu Application Platform, I also need certain features for that to work. I needed to find a way to more repeatably create clusters while getting the right flags enabled.
Solution
This solution assumes you have installed and set up the gcloud CLI, or are running this in the Google Cloud Shell.
CLUSTER=tap-demo
GKE_VERSION=1.24.5-gke.600
NODE_TYPE=e2-standard-2
NUM_NODES=4
PROJ=my-project
gcloud beta container --project $PROJ clusters create $CLUSTER \
--region "us-east4" --no-enable-basic-auth \
--cluster-version $GKE_VERSION --release-channel "regular" \
--machine-type $NODE_TYPE --image-type "COS_CONTAINERD" \
--disk-type "pd-balanced" --disk-size "100" --metadata disable-legacy-endpoints=true \
--scopes "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only",\
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/logging.write",\
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/monitoring",\
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/servicecontrol",\
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/service.management.readonly",\
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/trace.append",\
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/ndev.clouddns.readwrite" \
--max-pods-per-node "110" --num-nodes $NUM_NODES --logging=SYSTEM,WORKLOAD \
--monitoring=SYSTEM --enable-ip-alias \
--network "projects/mosher-workspace/global/networks/default" \
--subnetwork "projects/mosher-workspace/regions/us-east4/subnetworks/default" \
--no-enable-intra-node-visibility --default-max-pods-per-node "110" \
--no-enable-master-authorized-networks \
--addons HorizontalPodAutoscaling,HttpLoadBalancing,GcePersistentDiskCsiDriver --enable-autoupgrade \
--enable-autorepair --max-surge-upgrade 1 \
--max-unavailable-upgrade 0 --enable-shielded-nodes \
--node-locations "us-east4-a"
Further Details
First, of note for me is that I need "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/ndev.clouddns.readwrite" in order for External DNS to work. I moved the common things I need to change to variables, but you could certainly move other things there if needed. For example, you may want a different region but I almost always use us-east4.
Second, since this is a regional cluster, we need to specify --node-locations "us-east4-a" or else it would use all 3 zones. This would be great for production workloads, but isn’t necessary for me. If you omitted this option, it would create a 12 node cluster in this example (4 nodes X 3 zones).
Last, I think it’s important to point out how I got here - go to the GKE cluster creation screen in the Web UI, and you can select options in the GUI and then select the equivalent “command line” link at the bottom of the page. From there, you can customize the command to your liking or add it to your own scripting.
